


bloom (all those bloody bodies remix)

by orphan_account



Series: all those bloody bodies [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anti Team Cap, Bloom AU, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Soulmates, Tony Stark Has A Heart, do not copy to another site, im sorry everyone but most importantly buck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 11:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18031136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: cassandra darling when will you tell the truthor.the one where rhodey knows and he knows and heknows





	bloom (all those bloody bodies remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [togamis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/togamis/gifts).



> wack buck told me i should write something to do with bloom and now here we are. if i missed a trigger hit me bc i literally just read this and also tell me which i missed. 
> 
> um this is a ton of rambling nonsense and also p gay so yeah man. skjdskjs enjoy

They don't ever talk about it. They don't. He doesn't think they can, not anymore. Not after all of the blank spaces and all of the still hurting pieces. Rhodey just quietly shatters and Tony just quietly breaks and they don't talk about it.

It’s in college that Rhodey hears about Howard Stark, his violent disapproval and nonexistent empathy. Rhodey swears when he meets him he’ll hit him but then he sees a metal arm and knows he won’t have the chance to.

He knows he’ll see that metal arm again, and he may have to thank him for getting rid of that shitstain.

When it happens, Rhodey’s deployed and Tony’s on a bender and the guilt weighs on him like a guillotine but he doesn’t talk and no one will force him.  

He has nightmares sometimes. They sink in like hooks and hold him.

Rhodey knows when the gun kicks back and it's wrong and it's wrong and it's _wrong_. It kicks and he feels the hot-cold-burning of a flower on the base of his spine and then it's the ‘Ville, with him moving too fast and not fast enough and he did it why -

He's fine. He's sitting in the infirmary and they say that he was catatonic but he’s fine.

They don't accept anything less than fine where he's from.

Rhodey knows things. It's a fact of life. Rhodey knows but nobody believes him. He never stops warning them anyways.

Tony tries it once, tries to pull Rhodey into his bed and he _wants_. But then Tony reaches his hand down his pants and Rhodey goes still, tears streaming down his face and quietly saying ‘ _no, please’_ . Tony pulls away like he’s been burned and Rhodey crumples to the floor like a marionette with no strings. They stay like that, Rhodey crying on the floor and Tony crying on the bed, both begging the other’s forgiveness.

They don’t say anything about it in the morning. Rhodey doesn’t tell him but Tony still finds out but they don’t talk about that night.

They don’t try it again, though, and that’s enough to make Rhodey think he’s broken. Tony doesn’t lie and say he isn’t either.

Tony proposes the Jerico Missile and Rhodey’s brain blanks, filled with images of bloody and broken bodies and _Tony_.

He comes to on the floor, Tony chattering over him about malnutrition and _‘You’re on break, Rhodey. You gotta take better care of yourself.’_ and he thinks he’s going to cry.

He doesn’t have the chance to. He never does. But then it’s Afghanistan and the goddamn funvee and Rhodey runs himself ragged trying to find him, flowers burning their way into his legs.

He’ll take the blame for this one if it means Tony won’t have to.

Tony does, though. He’ll blame himself for anything he can. Rhodey holds him through it and if he doesn’t wear shorts anymore, it’s fine.

Everything’s fine. It has to be.

It’s not fine. He couldn’t tell at first but now he knows.

He doesn’t look Tony in the eye anymore, he can’t, not without seeing a corpse laying over top of him, cold and thin with black fanning out of that damned arc reactor.

The one thing that gave Tony back to him is now trying to take Tony away again. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. That’s his life, though, one tragedy after another.

And then there’s the fucking road race with Ivan Vanko and then there’s Justin Hammer’s hate boner for Tony and all Rhodey wants to do is take him and run but he _can’t_.

So he does the only thing he can, he watches and he waits. He wonders if watching Tony die will make up for 1983 and a car crash.

It doesn’t matter because they’re at a party and they’re fighting and he can’t sleep until Tony forgives him so he doesn’t. He lies awake and he asks, ~~_pleads, begs_~~ for forgiveness.

It doesn’t come.

He’s starting to think he’s Tony’s new pet project when he gets called away for duty. They ask him, plenty of times as if the answer was going to change, was Tony his soulmate. He laughs, and it sounds bitter and broken to even his own ears. He says no and for a second, for a millenia, he wishes he was lying.

The nightmares come back, but this time it’s Tony he’s shoving away and watching die. He knows by now that he’s not fit for active duty, not anymore, but if he can fake it at the evaluations - laughing, always laughing - he can fake it on the field.

He can cry in the shower if he has to.

He’s sitting and blankly staring when someone - maybe Rollins, he doesn’t remember - points out the news broadcast. It’s New York and he’s on the phone before he even registers what’s going on.

“Tony, please.” He’s talking but he’s too busy seeing Tony’s eyes glaze over and slide shut. He sees the portal start sliding shut but Tony’s still in there and -

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Tony never calls him that unless he’s going to die. It takes three men and all of the restraint in his body to keep him from running for the War Machine armor. Tony crashes back down, limp in his suit, and Rhodey has to bite back a sob. Then the Hulk catches him and in that moment Rhodey has never respected anyone more.

Tony calls him back later, bone-chilling fear almost hidden by bravado, and fuck a two week notice, Rhodey is going home _now_.

He hides the way his own heart hammers in his chest, anxiety holding him in it’s cold grasp, and does what needs to be done.

He gets their when it’s dark, suit retracting, and he sets to work. He pours out no less than 20 bottles of alcohol, Tony swearing at him all the way, but it’s worth the way the vision of Tony, passed out and dying alone, grays out and disappears.

They don’t get better, though. In fact, they get worse. Tony gets more withdrawn and Rhodey hates that he’s thankful for it, but if Tony tried to touch him right now he would have a meltdown and he doesn’t want to do that to Tony, not again.

He thanks the God he doesn’t believe in when he gets called back in. He’s been asked to do PR as the Iron Patriot. It’s just PR. But then Tony’s house is blown into the sea - he’s not dead, he’s not dead because Rhodey would _know_ \- and the armor is stolen along with the President. But then Tony is in front of him, in some vague semblance of okay, and they manage to figure out.

They always do.

He’s removed from active duty, however. The doctors say words like risk aversion when they really mean they want him on suicide watch and - despite his token protest - mark Tony Stark as a probable soulmate.

“No one acts the way you do for nothing.”

“We don’t have the same heart flower.”

“Atropa belladonna. Atropa pallidiflora. Sure, you don’t have the same heart flower, but they’re so close I don’t think it matters. Not anymore.” Rhodey is sent out, and he heads to New York. He tells Tony he’s on leave until further notice and if he neglects to mention that the military thinks they’re soulmates, well, it’s another white lie to add to the collection.

It’s quiet, peaceful. Or, as peaceful as it could get with Tony’s mad scientist tendencies.

Those are okay, though, he’s had years combating Tony’s crazier ideas.

He almost thinks the Future will leave him alone when he suddenly sees destruction and a shield and a metal arm with the word ‘triskelion’ on his lips.

He mentions it to Tony in passing and immediately regrets it. But Tony’s eyes light up and he has a weakness and before he knows it they’re headed to DC.

The Triskelion goes and he stares a soviet assassin in the eye and he goes to Nick Fury’s funeral while trying not to notice the fact that Fury’s in the back or that his chest is sore and his legs burn from where the flowers are, where they're shifting and moving like they’re alive.

His shirts get longer, and no one notices.

The Avengers move in, and Rhodey is the only one uncomfortable. He’s quiet about it though, not even the spies can tell. He’s made repression his home and it’s the one thing they won’t be able to catch him out on.

Then it’s that _mission_ and he doesn’t know how to save Tony from this. He can’t save him from the dark crevices of his own mind.

He tries anyways. Does everything he can think of that would convince Tony to just wait. It doesn’t work, and thus, Ultron.

His chest doesn’t stop burning for days after Sokovia.

The flowers are higher now, weaving their way around his pectorals, brushing along his collarbones. Turtlenecks become his new favorite shirt, his closet is full of them. He wears wide bracelets and paints his hands and is careful - so careful, always careful.

But careful isn’t perfect, and, of all things, Tony finds the last medical health record Rhodey had to complete before being pulled off active duty.

“Rhodes, want to tell me why the military deemed you a suicide risk? Or, maybe you want to tell me why they deemed me as a probable soulmate?” Tony’s voice was clipped, angry maybe. But worried was more likely. Before he could think of answer, though, Tony got a call from Secretary Ross.

The Sokovia Accords. Rhodey saw an airport, and a shield, and a destroyed arc reactor and he’s never been more scared in his whole life.

“Tony, can’t it wait until we get the rest of the Avengers here. We have to show a unified front.”

“Of course, Rhodey.”

Tony signs it anyways. Steve runs. Rhodey doesn’t sleep until he’s shot out of the sky.

Maybe the destroyed arc reactor was his.

Tony doesn’t talk about what happened in Siberia. He doesn’t have to, not with Rhodey’s hellish nightmares showing all the ways Tony could have died. It doesn’t help that he’s immobile in a hospital.

“Are you mad at me?” Tony asks, out of the blue to anyone who couldn’t see the stiff lines of tension in his smile.

“No, of course not. It wasn’t your fault.” Rhodey could never be angry at Tony for any length of time. There’s a lull in the conversation and Rhodey’s on the blink of sleep when Tony opens his mouth.

“You never told me why the military thinks we’re soulmates.” He guessed it was too much to hope that Tony had forgotten about that.

“I don’t know what answer you want me to give here, Tones. They just do.” Rhodey was asleep before he could hear Tony’s response.

He was discharged soon enough, and had physical therapy every day but Saturday. He was under strict bed rest, courtesy of Tony Stark. At least, when Tony was there. He was mostly in and out of Ross’ office, trying to gain a pardon for the ‘Rogue Avengers’ as the media called them.

James Barnes is the first. He’s wheeled in, inside a cryo tank. They defrost him while Rhodey watches, quiet and still. He sees them, the deadly nightshade, _atropa belladonna_ , layered across his skin and he _knows_.

He leaves, quiet as he came in.

He wishes he could be jealous, angry, _something_. He doesn’t. He just gives the both of them - the Winter and Bucky, two halves of the same whole - a shovel talk. He tells them to tell Tony, but based on the way they still dance around each other, he doubts they did.

He’s happy for them, and that hurts worst of all.

Then the Rogues show back up, and Rhodey has to play mediator for a bunch of adults.

He doesn’t do peaceful mediation well. He guesses it's because he's an older sibling.

There’s still a knife mark in the wall from the last time someone talked bad about Tony in his presence. Clint still refuses to sit across from him.

The Winter gave him knife throwing lessons.

Then there’s goddamn aliens. Because, apparently, he can never catch a break.

It doesn’t help that the only thing he can see is Tony plummeting.

“Tony, please be careful.”

“You know me, Rhodey, I always am.”

Tony Stark hits the pavement, and his heart stops beating. Rhodey disengages his suit, and takes off running before someone grabs him.

“Hey, Rhodes, I’m going to need you to calm down for me right now.” He can’t, though, not when it’s Tony and this is why the military labeled him a suicide risk and this is why he feels too much and not enough at the same time.

It’s Tony, always has been, always will be.

Steve walks away and Rhodey is angry, he’s furious, but he can’t breathe for the fear that he’s failed.

“Paramedics.” He says and hopes against hope that the pain in his chest is just anxiety and not another flower.

He doesn’t think he can handle wearing Tony’s flower.

He knows he can’t. The Future doesn’t have to tell him that.

Tony’s stabilized and Rhodey’s one stiff wind from falling over but he needs to make sure the Winter doesn’t kill Steve before Rhodey gets a chance to.

Maybe Bucky will do it himself, that’ll be a fight he’d pay to see.

He entered the communal floor to see Steve holding a wad of napkins to his face.

“Guess he got to you first. Did it knock some sense into you or should I get him to do it again?” Rhodey said, drawing all attention to himself.

“That’s unfair, Rhodes.” Clint said back, eyes tracking his movement.

“What’s unfair is leaving someone to die in the street, but your captain does it anyways.” Steve glares at him, but he doesn’t really care.

“Quit the pissing contest, Rhodes needs to go back down to the infirm anyways. I can’t be the only one that sees the way his eyes aren’t focusing or the fact that he’s bleeding from three different places.” Sam’s voice is sharp and brooks no argument.

Rhodey gets in the elevator and goes to his own room anyways. His sheets are covered in blood and sweat when he wakes up and he has vertigo that could kill, but he and Pepper make their way down to the infirmary to talk to Tony and Bucky.

Bucky looks at him a bit harder than usual, but he’s used to being watched. Tony is to be released in two weeks and Rhodey has to make sure the Rogues won’t try anything.

“He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be bothered, so leave him alone.”

“Why do you care, Rhodes? I get he’s your best friend and all but he’s a murder and he did it for himself. How can you stand to be around him?” Steve said. His voice was confused, like he truly didn’t understand why Rhodey cared.

“I met Tony Stark when he was fourteen and barely knew what flowers meant. I already had three by the time I was his age. However bad you think Tony is, you should know that I’m a whole lot worse.” Rhodey left, collarbones twinging.

He stayed away from everyone, got busy helping Pepper with PR. And if it meant he didn’t have to see Steve Roger’s face, or watch Tony and Bucky be romantic in front of him, well that was just a coincidence.

He should have known it wouldn’t last, not with Tony’s perception.

“You’re avoiding me.” Tony said, bravado painted over the hurt in his voice. He flinched, and surreptitiously flicked his eyes over to his other side, to see Bucky standing there. He was cornered and he would be lying if he said it wasn’t a problem.

“I’m not.” Rhodey was edging backwards, trying to think of a way to escape this conversation.

“Then what have you been doing, because it looks a lot like avoiding.” That was a easy question.

“Working PR with Pepper. The media has been real finicky, especially since the Rogues came back.” If he moves farther back, Bucky will move farther into his line of sight, allowing him an opening to leave.

“You aren’t looking to good, Rhodey.” Bucky said. Rhodey flicked his eyes back over to him.

“What he means is, you look like you’ve been running on fumes. Have been since the aliens attacked. Now, I know my lab isn’t the infirmary, but maybe come down and take a break?” They’re concerned and it’d be easier if they were just angry. If they were angry he could just say no and move on, but it’s concern and it makes him soft around the edges and he concedes.

“Okay.” They're faces brighten and Rhodey hates that he’s so easy. They’re nice about it, too, gentle words like they’ve softened their hard edges just for him.

He lays down on that ridiculous sofa bed Tony bought three years ago and is asleep in seconds.

He wakes to images of the repulsors and Steve’s crumpled body on the floor and he wishes that he could live in the present like a normal person.

“Did you deactivate the emergency overrides?” He asks, instead. Then, “Where’s Bucky gone to?”

“Bucky was called away by Coulson for a mission while you were asleep. He should be back soon. The emergency overrides are still active but I think only you and Pepper have one.”

“Boss, shield’s up.” FRIDAY cuts in, and Tony pulls on a repulsor and aims it at the door. Steve walks in, and immediately puts his hands up. Steve says he just wants to talk but Rhodey knows different. He knows better.

“Get out.” Rhodey’s voice sounded off, even to his own ears, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when Steve was trying to say that it was Tony’s fault he got left to die.

“What?”

“I said what I said. Get. Out.” Rhodey stood, making his way towards Steve like a man on a mission. Tony gasped but it didn’t even register over the anger coursing through his veins. Something must have shown on his face because Steve blanched and turned, practically running away.

“Rhodey, wha-what happened to you?” Tony’s voice was odd, like he was trying not to spook a feral animal. He turned and Tony collapsed into his arms, tears streaming down his face. Rhodey stumbled slightly before simply falling to the floor,

“What do you mean ‘what happened to me’? I'm fine.” Tony lifted a hand to his collarbones, lightly grazing against the flowers just underneath. He stills.

“Don't-Did they hurt?” Tony stutters out.

“No.” He’s lying, they burned and itched as they were etched onto his skin. But Tony doesn’t need to know that.

“I still love you, you know.” Tony’s asleep before Rhodey can think of a response. Bucky enters his line of sight, blurry and barely there. He lifts Tony effortlessly, placing him gently where Rhodey was no more than 20 minutes ago. He comes back.

He comes back.

A ragged sob tears out of Rhodey’s throat and he doesn’t quite know what’s wrong but something’s wrong. Tears are streaming down his face but he’s not upset because he’s fine. He’s always fine.

Bucky pulls him close, wraps himself around Rhodey and holds him until the tears stop.

“He wasn’t lying. I always knew Tony and Rhodey were a package deal. And we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but we’d both prefer if you’d stay. Okay?” It’s the first time the Future hasn’t shown him destruction and death and he only has one response.

“Okay.”

And so what if Rhodey’s a bit crazy and Tony’s a bit different and Bucky’s a bit broken. They'll work it out.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu at [my tumblr](https://tcnyrhcdey.tumblr.com) where we can scream about how good buck is at things and also the probable sequel to this mess


End file.
